The debug command on a Cisco pix firewall is a very powerful way of viewing information, alerts and errors in real time as they occur on your Cisco pix. The problem is that all the output goes straight to the console and before you know it you can be overwhelmed by the information being displayed!

For long term debugging and analysis this is simply not practical, and this is where a syslog server comes in. A syslog server will allow logging from the pix to be sent to a dedicated syslog server. The server will then need to run a syslog piece of software that will receive the messages and interpret them into human readable format. Setting all this up is actually pretty simple so let’s go over that now.

The software – Firstly you’re going to need a piece of syslog server software, there are many out there available and most will cost you, if however you want a free version then check out the 3Com syslog message daemon. You can download it from here. The setup is very simply, once you’ve installed it and if necessary allowed it access through the firewall you will be presented with a screen like this:

This is all the configuring that needs doing for the syslog software, by clicking file and configure you can change the location of the log files that get generated. At this point the machine will be ready to accept incoming syslog messages, so now it’s time to configure the pix!

Firstly you need to check what version your pix is running on, you can do this by running a show version command in the console. If your pix is version 4.0 – 4.1 then you need to run the following commands:

syslog host x.x.x.x (where x.x.x.x is the ip address of the server running the syslog software)

syslog output x.y (x is the logging facility and y is the logging level)

Let’s go over the logging facility and logging level. You can have multiple logging facility’s should you want to send different logging levels to different syslog servers, you can use between local0 and local7 (eight different locations). To start with just Local0 is sufficient. When using the output command above, x translates to a decimal number that correspond to the local levels. Local0 is 16 and local7 is 23. so 16-23 are all valid numbers.

As for the logging level, you can decide what messages get outputted to the syslog server, here is a list of the different types:

Emergency – 0
Alert – 1
Critical – 2
Error – 3
Warning – 4
Notification – 5
Information – 6
Debug – 7

If you just want to log problems and alerts then level 3 is a good level to go for. Obviously if you choose level 3 then everything underneath (levels 0,1 and 2) will also get logged. If you log level 4 then you will start to get syslog messages indicating when firewall rules have been enforced and packets have been dropped. If you’re on a busy line then this will generate a lot of output so be warned!

So, as an example, if we wanted to use Local0 and level 4 we would run the command:

syslog output 16.4

At this point you’re done and all the syslog messages will start getting sent to the syslog server.

If you are running your Cisco pix firewall on version 4.2 or later then the commands change slightly to these:

logging host x.x.x.x (where x.x.x.x is the ip address of the syslog server)

logging facility x (where x is the decimal number for the logging facility as described above)

logging trap y (where y is the decimal number to determine what types of messages get outputted)

These three commands are all you need to enable your Cisco pix to start outputting what you have specified to the syslog server.

The latest installment of Windows has been quite a good success, especially when compared to Vista! If you’re planning on buying Windows 7 then you are going to need to decide between 32bit and 64bit. Now, depending on your processor you may only be capable of running 32bit, you are going to need to check if your processor is 64bit capable.

You can check this in either device manager or your computer properties, if you’re on a 32bit processor then you should have (x86) next to your processor listing, if you’re on 64bit then you should have (x64) next to it.

Now that you’ve determined what processor you have you can decide upon whether you should go for 32bit or 64bit Windows 7. There are a few things to consider first before doing this.

Firstly, how much memory do you have? If you have 4GB or under and don’t plan on ever going above 4GB (most people won’t be doing this for a while) then 64bit Windows is going to be quite pointless. Essentially Windows 7 64bit will allow you to use more than 4GB of ram. Technically speaking 4GB is the limit for a 32bit processor and operating system. 64bit allows for much more memory usage.

Whether you need more than 4GB of ram is dependent upon what you use your computer for, if you’re running lots of different memory intensive applications at once then you might benefit from more than 4GB and in which case the 64bit Windows 7 is for you.

If however you are a casual user and don’t plan on running lots of different programs at once then chances are you won’t need to go for the 64bit edition. Having the 64bit Windows 7 isn’t something you should consider unless you really need it. The reason I say this is because there are still issues with 64bit drivers for some hardware. Simply put if you have some uncommon third party hardware there might not be any 64bit Windows 7 drivers available, and if there aren’t – you won’t be able to use it!

This is the most common reason for people to not upgrade to a 64bit operating system because of the lack of driver support for a lot of hardware; this is especially applicable for Windows 7 because it is a relatively new version of windows.

My advice to anyone considering Windows 7 64bit over 32bit is this – Do you have more than 4GB of memory and are you going to benefit from more? Most casual users simply don’t need it right now and you might think it’s great to have 8GB or more, but a lot of the time it simply won’t get used. If you are running many applications at once and you know for sure that your memory usage can get quite high then yes, go for Windows 7 64bit, but also be aware that you might have to spend some time hunting down 64bit versions of drivers for your hardware.

If you do decide to go for 64bit Windows then you can be safe in the knowledge that your operating system is now future proof and having Windows 7 64bit should mean you won’t need to upgrade for quite a long time!